Where I live in central Maine the state had encouraged farmers to spread sewage and paper mill sludge on their hayfields for decades since the 80's. Turns out that sludge was typically heavily contaminated with the PFAS family of pollutants. Many thousands of acres of fields are so heavily contaminated that they can essentially never be used to grow food crops or forage again. Many private wells in those areas are also polluted beyond use. Deer meat should not be consumed in areas around contaminated fields. Anyhow, these heavily polluted fields are great candidates for solar installations. Might as well turn lemons into lemonade.
That's not entirely true. As someone who works in the field and has tested for PFAS contaminants in groundwater, as well as being the highest licensed professional in the state (two states actually, Maine and now Arizona), you have half the information. While it's true the state did advocate for sludge spreading on agriculture fields going back even before the 1980's, PFAS was not known as a contaminant until the late 1980's, when DuPont and 3M starting recognizing issues with people handling certain chemicals. Even then they dismissed it, and you can read about the lawsuit where they buried the information as long as they could. By the time regulators found out about it in the 1990's, they had no idea how mobile it was or how it would affect the ecosystem. While it's true wastewater plants were spreading PFAS on the land in the form of biosolids (treated and stabilized sludge), their wastewater plants were never designed to remove it, they didn't know about it, and nor were or are water treatment plants. Paper mills that used PFAS in their process were few and far between since they didn't produce products that required it, so to blame them all is a disservice.
It wasn't until the 2000's that regulators become interested when wells started becoming contaminated with the product, and here is why: they had no reliable way to measure into the part per trillion range nor did they know that had to test that low. A part per trillion is a very small number, a trillion seconds ago was 29,700 B.C. and if you lived a trillion seconds you'd be 31,709 years old. Once they/we knew about the dangers of PFAS, alternatives were developed, such as GenX, which was thought to do the same thing as PFAS but without the harmful contamination aspect. Yeah, not so much...a few years later they also found it's toxic to living organisms and the ecosystem...oops. But you know the thing about PFAS is that it was so good at what it did the EPA, FDA, congress, and even state legislatures didn't ban it outright. In fact, you can still buy PFAS laden items today, and odds are very good you probably have some on the shelf in the form of deodorants, shampoos, clothing, industrial tape, food packaging, and even cosmetics. Imagine putting on a fresh layer of PFAS every morning. But then again, if you don't know, is it an issue? It was particularly effective in the firefighting foam commonly used, and you know how much firefighters train. Now with more modern technology, the EPA set an interim health limit of 4 parts per quadrillion (ppqt), which is 1,000 times lower than a part per trillion. Truly a mind-blowingly small number (and quite frankly, one I stopped caring about). Here's an interesting tidbit, the health advisory level is 0.004 ppt, but current test methods can only test down to 1 ppt, so even at the method detection limit you may be exceeding the health advisory. When asked about this discrepancy, the answer was that they're hoping technology (to test) will catch up. Typical government...
Here are a few informative articles on PFAS, but keep in mind they're opinion pieces (as are virtually all press articles):
https://www.pressherald.com/2021/07/18/trail-of-forever-chemicals-leads-to-maine-paper-mills/
https://www.themainemonitor.org/a-spreading-problem-how-pfas-got-into-soils-and-food-systems/
The first link is about Nathan Saunders and his contaminated well. In typical press fashion, they fail to mention Nate was an engineer who worked for the Maine DEP that tested sludges to see if they were safe enough to put on the land! I worked with Nate on several projects and found him to be a nice guy with integrity but I have to wonder why the press left that little tidbit off the article. But anyway...
The part about the land not being usable again is not true. Collaborative efforts are underway through multiple agencies to do something called phytoremediation, which is using plants to uptake the contaminants from the soil and water. We used something similar for one of the Superfund hazardous waste projects I worked on in 1996. Once the contaminants are captured in the plants, they're harvested and disposed of in a controlled manner (safe). Part of the issue with PFAS is there is no easy destruction like other chemicals, which means you're just cycling it around in the ecosystem. To this day the EPA (I know because I've talked to them) has no disposal methods of PFAS contaminated filters or media. There is great hope to finding a solution and currently hemp looks like a clear frontrunner. Wells are also not polluted beyond use, PFAS can be removed by filtration using activated carbon from coconut shells, through ion exchange adsorption (like a water softener or arsenic system), or through reverse osmosis. Developing technologies are showing promise through other fields and I have a few technical papers on my desk at work about them.
The issue is so recent there are no hard and fast rules or limits, just interim ones. We're learning more every day and I am confident solutions are on the near horizon. The problem is this stuff has been around since 1938, and we didn't know it was harmful for half a century, so it's everywhere in everything. Weaning off it will take time and cleaning it up will take even longer. But for the amount the producers knew about it and when, they should absolutely have their feet held to the fire for cleanup efforts. So don't discount that land just yet...